I have finally got my St. Patrick’s day mantel up and can’t wait to share it with you. Even though it isn’t a big holiday, it is fun to see what I can come up with every year and this year was no exception.
This year I created a couple of new items to use. One was my String Art Shamrock, which I am still in love with:

I know nail and string art has been around blogland for a while now.. but I finally jumped on the bandwagon. Heck, I even remember a string art picture hanging up at my Grandma's house when I was just a little girl.. back in the late 70's so it isn't like this is even a recent trend, but I am finally getting on board.

Since St. Patrick’s day is the next holiday for me, I thought I would make a shamrock shape. Why not?

The best thing about spring is all the new flowers and rich colors after a long dull, grey winter. And so to capture those colors, I decided to take the girls around the neighborhood to collect some of the flowers and create this art project.

In the past we have pressed spring flowers between the pages of a book at preserved them that way, but the kids don’t actually find that very entertaining. The process is pretty long and there is no immediate gratification, plus at the end of the day you end up with a dried dead flower.

Today I have a super quick little tutorial for you. The end product isn’t the biggest, most exciting thing you have ever seen, but sometimes these little hacks are the best tricks!

If you are anything like me, you probably have a bunch of extension cords lying around your house or garage. Maybe they are neatly wrapped up neatly hanging on a hook, or maybe they are thrown in a box, or maybe you are even organized enough to keep them neat by tying them up with zip ties (which is actually what I have always done when I am planning to store them long term.)

But what I didn’t like about the Zip Tie method is that you need to cut off the tie to remove it, they aren’t reusable.

Then one day I was reading my subscription to Family Handyman (hey, some girls like Vogue, I like FH!) and I saw a reader had submitted this cork cord tie in the ‘hacks and tricks’ column. I was immediately intrigued. So I ran out and bought all the supplies to make my own.

I am super thrilled with this project especially for the total investment of only $10 and 10 minutes of my time. Seriously! The best bang for my buck that I’ve had in a while!

This fun pendant light came about when I was searching the dollar store with the kids for items to use for their school valentine’s this year (we ended up settling on this and this) but I also happened upon these great little metal wire trash baskets and I knew immediately what I wanted to do with them!

If you follow me anywhere on social media you are probably well aware of my coffee obsession. If Starbucks had a ‘Platinum Member’ status, I would qualify.
(Shameless plugs: FacebookTwitter / Pinterest / Instagram / Google+ )

I drink so much coffee, I have not one, but TWO recent projects that involve my multitude of leftover K-cups. Because of this (probably unhealthy) obsession with coffee, last year the fine people at Keurig sent me a Keurig2.0 to play with and test out. The big “claim to fame’ of the 2.0 is that it not only brews single serving K-Cups, but it also brews full pots of coffee. That is the “2.0” part of this machine. But this post isn’t really a review of the 2.0. I don’t love it enough to plug it here. This is more of a ‘hack’ to get around one of the biggest drawbacks this new version has.

I know it is isn’t for everyone, but I am one of those people who actually enjoys camping. Now, sure my family and I aren’t hard core ‘roughing it’ people, but we do use tents, and sleep on the ground and cook our meals on the campfire. I guess you would call us “car campers.” It is always fun to take the kids to the lake or hiking in the mountains and spend the evenings around the fire roasting marshmallows and telling stories. Everything seems like such an adventure.

I am squeezing in under the wire here.. A week from tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and I just now getting my mantel finished. Granted, I’ve had all the components for they baby done for weeks now, but you know how that is.. the room was always too messy to actually photograph it! #keepingitrealwithkimsix

This is my second school valentine post of the year, but that is because I have 2 school aged kids exchanging valentines, so we have to keep coming up with ideas. This is what we came up with for the second grader to hand out:
Just like the race car valentines (which was the choice of my kindergardener) this is another “what can make out of stuff we found at the dollar store” type of creation.
This time we used small bags of party favors in the shape of tiny gold trophies. Because they came 4 to a bag, it worked out to only 25 cents each.

This post is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group® and Universal Pictures, but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia #BoxtrollsFamilyNite http://my-disclosur.es/OBsstV

We recently purchased The Boxtrolls movie on DVD at Walmart and my kids really enjoyed it. There is something really comforting about fresh popped popcorn and cuddling up on the sofa with a fun new movie:
If you haven’t seen it (and without giving anything away) the movie is set in a town called Cheesebridge and the people of the town ADORE cheese. So, taking that as inspiration, we decided to create a cheesy popcorn treat for our movie night. But not your typical Day-Glo orange cheese popcorn. No. I wanted a much more ‘adult’ flavor profile.